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Calling India
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Biraja Mahapatra has a novel idea to keep us emotionally integrated, writes Anuj Kumar
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Photo: Shanker Chakravarty
All for one Biraja Mahapatra also runs a civil society organisation called Build India Group
Unity in diversity might have become clichéd but it’s yet to become a reality in this country. It comes through in our everyday experiences. Biraja Mahapatra, an Oriya mother tongue lawyer who practises at the Delhi High Court, says, R
20;Once a celebrity writer told me, ‘you have no right to live in this country if you don’t know Hindi.’” Similarly he recalls, in Puri when the North Indians come for a darshan, the locals pass snide remarks at them.
“My grandmother used to say, ‘Get inside, the dirty Hindustanis are coming.’ Their only fault was, in those days trains were powered by coal and it took barely a few hours to get covered in grime and soot.”
Biraja, who has also been a journalist, has shared his experiences in “My Call”, recently published by Akshay Media.
The scourge is not limited to the illiterate. “Once in Delhi there was a death in my neighbourhood. I asked an acquaintance. What happened? He replied a Hindustani died. I asked what he meant. He said a Hindustani is a person of low caste. I felt pained, particularly because it came from an educated Delhiite.”
Biraja, who also started a civil society organisation called Build India Group, says the term Hindustan is yet to be accepted by Indians themselves for the whole of India.
“For South Indians, Hindustan means the Hindi speaking North, and North Indians label everybody from the four South Indian states as Madrasis. Perhaps that’s why the preamble of our Constitution says, ‘India that is Bharat’ and not ‘India that is Hindustan’.”
Quoting Ambedkar, Biraja says he called Hindu society a myth and termed the name itself foreign. “In Persian, Hindoostan means the black place or where black people live. So why should we use something to identify us when it was originally meant to slight us?”
A pledge
Moving on from the identity aspect, Biraja feels the need of the hour is emotional integration. For this he has a suggestion. “India is a country of festivals. I feel we should have one more national festival where at the stroke of an appointed hour, every Indian takes a pledge.” He feels this can work as a force to create a sense of hatred against corruption and terrorism. “Even a child can point out to his father if he deviates from the pledge creating an emotional impact.” The pledge goes like this: We the people of India today do solemnly pledge ourselves to the service of our nation with honesty, sincerity and commitment; always keeping our nation’s interests paramount in all that we think, do or say, for the greater glory of this land. “The modicum of such a festival can be discussed. It should be a secular festival to be celebrated religiously.”
Biraja appeals to the media, the entertainment industry and the Government to take the idea forward.
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